A Quote by Christopher Guest
It's dangerous talking about comedy; it gets to be very tedious and presumptuous.
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Interestingly it's when you come to the comedy, that's where a lot of the discussion is. It's like ten people sitting around talking about what is funny. "Is that funny? Is that funnier than that? Is this slightly funnier than this?" I guess that's what it's like when you're making a comedy movie as well, you just have to sit around talking seriously about the nature of comedy.
You can imagine sitting in a room for three days talking about comic books, eight hours a day. It gets wacky and very nerdy. It also gets contentious at times.
When you start talking about elections being rigged, you're pushing people beyond democratic governance. And it's a very, very dangerous thing to do.
I don't think so much about verbal comedy. I always think about visual comedy. I was raised watching silents, and I'm always thinking about how to make cinema, not good talking - although I want good talking. I'm much more interested in framing, composition, and orchestration of bodies in space, and so forth.
I think writing in a group, even though it can be a challenge - you have to be on your toes all the time - is the way the best comedy gets written. It's very, very collaborative. A lot of comedy writers are definitely introverted nerds.
I really like people who can do both drama and comedy and not some like middle of the road do both drama and comedy. I'm not talking about some guy who does these bland dramedies all the time. I'm talking about people that have done heavy drama and who have done heavy comedy.
We have become this very fear-based culture, especially post-9/11. Fear is the opposite of love, in my opinion. I think there would be more love in the world. I'm not talking about rainbows and unicorns and '70s Coca-Cola commercials. I'm talking about gritty, dangerous, wild-eyed love. Radical acceptance of people. Belonging. A good, goofy kind of love.
I have been very fortunate to see some very clearly excellent players play well to the very ends of their career, where they opted not to play anymore. I'm talking about Adrian Beltre. I'm talking about Torii Hunter. I'm talking about David Ortiz, Chipper Jones, Derek Jeter. These are players who decided, 'You know, I've had enough. That's good.'
I am actually talking about possibly adapting 'The Boys,' by Garth Ennis, which would not be a comedy, but an action movie with comedy elements to it.
What I've kind of learned about comedy is that when comedy gets too expensive it might not be funny. Sometimes it's good to keep the conditions where you're pressed for time and it's just about getting the work done, as opposed to how much things are we eating on the set.
It's important that comedians talk about difficult and dangerous subjects; you have to be very careful that you don't just hear the subject heading and think, oh, this is bad, they shouldn't be talking about that. You have to hear what's being said.
I don't think one gets to choose the kind of comedy he/she does. I may not talk about Rahul Gandhi's take on an ordinance, but I will talk about things as simple as a 'chappal' or a 'sherwani.' My comedy is about small things, and that is how it connects.
A sign now of success with a certain audience when you do a short comedy piece, anywhere, is that it gets on YouTube and gets around. It's always something you're thinking about unconsciously.
When you start talking about same-sex marriage, you start talking about abortion, and I think those issues are very very important and very interesting and very right for us to talk about, but when we allow those issues to cannibalize all other issues we find ourselves homeless while we debate about it.
You know, I think British comedy is very smart comedy. You don't get too much dumb comedy over here. Or at least I haven't seen it. If I'm wrong about that, I apologize to all the dumb comedy makers over here.
Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world.
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